


Bygone

by taizi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Days Eater tag, Gen, in which kitamoto and nishimura stumble upon young natsume before taki and tanuma find him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-10-23 15:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10722207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Natsume doesn’t think these people are lying to him. They’re too warm and lively to be monsters, the humanorthe spirit kind. They’re smiling at him nicely.He likes them.





	1. Chapter 1

Taki forgets the cupcakes. Tanuma says, “Natsume won’t mind if we’re a few minutes late,” and they double back to her house to retrieve them. 

When the Days Eater has gone, and Nyanko is left with a pint-sized Natsume where the proper one should have been, Taki and Tanuma aren’t there to intervene and the child slips away from the unfamiliar tanuki yokai, moving as silently and certainly as a little ghost. 

Natsume is fairly certain he’s lost, and fairly certain he hasn’t been missed. But he wouldn’t want to cause the family he’s staying with any trouble – not sooner than he can help, at least. So he’ll follow the road into town, and figure things out from there. 

He can’t go far before he has to stop and roll the legs of his pants up. They keep slipping down so he cinches the belt tighter, and loses the long socks completely. The grass feels good under his feet anyway, sun-warm and springy. He’s surrounded by fields that seem to sprawl forever. He doesn’t know where he is, but it seems calm and welcoming. It seems nice. 

“–told you, _look_ at him! He looks just like Natsume! Right down to the thousand yard stare.”

Natsume jumps, whirling around and losing his footing as he does. He lands with an _oof_ and looks up to find himself face to face with an older boy. A high school student, maybe. There’s two of them, but only one is at his eye level, crouching in the road with an expression of wonder.

“Kitamoto, seriously, are you seeing this? Hey kid, what’s your name?”

He’s shrinking from them automatically – bigger bodies and bigger numbers usually don’t mean anything good for him, and he doesn’t want to go home with bruises on top of everything else he’s put his current family through – but there’s no real fear in his heart of these older boys, none at _all._

That’s… surprising. 

So he says, softly, “Natsume.” And blinks when the boy in front of him grins, like his name was the right answer. 

“I knew it! Natsume never told us he had a little cousin. Your family must have super genes or something, ‘cause the resemblance is _scary._ ” 

“Do you hear yourself when you talk, Nishimura? You’re freaking him out.” The other boy – Kitamoto – yanks Nishimura back by the hood of his sweatshirt so he topples backwards, but not in the mean way Natsume’s classmates do. Nishimura squawks in outrage and scrambles for a second like a stag beetle tipped on its back, and Kitamoto offers Natsume a hand with a warm smile. “C’mon, you’ll catch cold out here. What are you doing, running around without shoes on?”

“You’re not his _mom,_ Acchan. He might look like Natsume, but there’s no way he gets sick as easily as him. _No one_ gets sick as easily as him.“

Natsume takes Kitamoto’s hand tentatively, and the high schooler doesn’t hold it too tight or pull too hard; just brings him up to his feet with a friendly yank, and then tousles his hair a bit. 

“You – you know my,” he swallows hard, and says, “Natsume? You know him?”

“Well, sure,” Nishimura says, dusting himself off. “We’re his buddies. He’s in my class, too.”

The tanuki yokai said the same thing, sort of. About being a high school student, and living in this area with people called the Fujiwaras. And he doesn’t think these people are lying to him. They’re too warm and lively to be monsters, the human _or_ the spirit kind. They’re smiling at him nicely. 

He likes them. 

By the time Nyanko finds them, a few minutes later, he has two more older kids in tow, a dark-haired boy and a fair-haired girl. They all look equally disheveled and a little pale – even the tanuki, through all his fur. Natsume presses behind Kitamoto, folding fingers into the fabric of his jacket, and feels a hand settle on his head. 

“Don’t worry, mini Natsume,” Nishimura says with a wide grin. He’s crouched down again, so Natsume doesn’t have to tilt his head back to look up at him. “They’re some of Natsume’s friends. Ours, too! Real good ones. Oh, and they have his ugly cat with them, of course they do.” 

Kind people have kind friends. Natsume’s pretty sure that’s something he knows. So he steps out from behind Kitamoto, but keeps a hand clenched around the hem of his jacket, and feels a little bit better when Nishimura drops a friendly hand on his head. 

The two new people seem nice, he thinks. They look really worried, but they also look relieved to see him, and with a guilty pang he wonders if maybe he had been missed by someone in this place, after all. 

“Sorry,” he says without thinking, once introductions have been made. He can’t bring himself to talk very loud, but they all fall quiet around him anyway. The attention is nearly too much. He wants to hide behind Kitamoto again. “For – for being lost.” 

“You don’t need to apologize,” Tanuma says. He stoops to talk to Natsume, too, the way Nishimura did. “We were afraid something happened to you, that’s all. I’m glad these two found you when they did.”

“Come to think of it,” Nishimura says brightly, in a tone that promises trouble. “It’s kinda weird Natsume didn’t tell us he’d have a little doppleganger running around town this weekend. Just seems like something he’d mention.” 

“On top of that, he told us he doesn’t have any close relatives,” Kitamoto adds, with steely resolve in his voice. “That’s why he moved to this town in the first place. He wouldn’t lie about something like that, not to us.” 

Wherever this place is, Natsume thinks, awed, it would have been nice to live here all along. Whatever he did to earn friends like these, he wishes he could have done it sooner. 

Tanuma is rubbing a hand through his hair awkwardly, and Natsume missed the excuse he came up with but it must have been a weak one, because Kitamoto and Nishimura aren’t buying it.

“No way,” Nishimura says vehemently, “I know that look in your eye, Tanuma. That’s the Natsume Look. The last time you looked like that was the other day, when he totally zoned out and nearly walked straight into traffic.”

“Same look,” Kitamoto agrees, face folded into a scowl. “You only come running like that when it’s for _him_ , so explain why you came running like that for a grade schooler who looks just like him.”

“And before you try it, I know it’s not his brother,” Nishimura adds with certainty. “He doesn’t have one.” 

Natsume shuffles back a step, heart racing. He doesn’t like arguments, they always lead into fights. He doesn’t want to cause trouble – honestly, despite everything, he really doesn’t. 

They don’t think he’s a liar yet, and he doesn’t want to change their minds, but he doesn’t want these friends to fight. This place and these people are _good,_ and he doesn’t want to be what makes that good go away. 

“Um,” he says, faltering under the weight of five stares. “Um, maybe – it would be okay to tell them.”

His heart thumps painfully in his chest as he says it, because he’s been here before and it never goes right. But a sudden touch has Natsume looking down, and he’s surprised to find the tanuki – the _cat_ yokai leaning its considerable weight in a companionable way against his leg. It’s purring, dark eyes glinting something close to green in the sun, and even without speaking it seems to be giving Natsume a nudge.

It’s familiar, he realizes. He knows what that grinning face is trying to tell him. He pets it carefully, a little dazed, and tries to remember a time anyone else has ever said to him _“I’m right behind you.”_ He can’t. 

“Okay,” he whispers. 

It pushes out of his hand with a huff, shaking out its fur, and then says grumpily, “Alright, brats, you heard him. Let’s just air this out right now.” 

Nishimura and Kitamoto both spring away with a yelp, and Kitamoto plucks Natsume right off the ground, holding him up and away from the talking calico. Everything is dead silent for a handful of seconds that feels like an hour. The gentle breeze is the loudest thing in the world as it rustles through the trees lining the road. 

Tanuma buries his face in both hands, and Taki says, “Nyanko-sensei! You _know_ better!”

“We weren’t solving anything just standing around, were we! And besides, these idiots may be thick but they’re not thick enough to buy whatever cover story the priest’s brat puts together.”

“A cat just called me an idiot,” Nishimura whispers. Natsume dangles in Kitamoto’s arms, trying to wrap his mind around the novel concept of another human protecting him from a harmless yokai. _That_ might have been the most ridiculous thing to happen so far today, and Natsume muffles his mouth behind both hands and laughs. 

The bickering cuts off as abruptly as it started, and Natsume is lowered slowly to the ground. He’s still grinning a little bit when he stops giggling – he can’t help it! “I wish I met you sooner, Nyanko-sensei,” he says, stretching his hands out for the cat. “It would have been a lot easier to make people believe me if I had you around.”

The cat waddles over agreeably, giving Tanuma a smug look from the circle of Natsume’s arms, and Natsume glances up when Nishimura tentatively draws closer. 

“So, call me crazy,” he says, with a nervous smile, “but I think I’d know that laugh anywhere. What have you got yourself into this time, Natsume?”

Kind people have kind friends. For the life of him, Natsume doesn’t know what it took for someone like him to get close to people like this, but he’ll do it again – over and over, forever, if that’s what it takes to keep them.

He hugs Nyanko-sensei close, and smiles up at the older boy he doesn’t know, who knows him so well. 

“A monster made me little again,” he says. “Will you help me?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone on tumblr asked for a continuation, and i did my best to oblige!

It must be strange for them, Natsume thinks.

He can’t wrap his mind around being older and then suddenly being young again, and he doesn’t think these bigger kids can, either. Taki and Tanuma are tense, as if they’re braced for a fight and dreading one at the same time, but Nishimura doesn’t take his cues from anyone.

Instead he exclaims, “I _knew_ that cat could talk!”

Kitamoto looks at him sideways, but it doesn’t sound like he’s joking. Nishimura jabs an accusing finger at the round creature in Natsume’s arms and adds heatedly, “So all those times you stole my snacks you knew _exactly_ what you were doing! What kind of guardian are you? Natsume, your cat owes me money.”

It’s so silly that Natsume giggles, and Tanuma blurts, “How could you _know_?”

Nishimura sits, right there in the dusty road, and pats the hard earth beside him for Natsume to sit, too. When he does, Nishimura puts an arm around his shoulders as if it’s any other day, and something older in Natsume’s heart aches.

“Maybe I didn’t know,” he admits. “But Nyanko-sensei’s voice sounds familiar. I must have heard Natsume talking to him before, even if I didn’t know what I was hearing. Honestly, this explains a lot.”

“Explains a lot of what?” Natsume pipes up, and giggles again when Nishimura messes his hair up playfully.

“You do strange things sometimes,” Kitamoto explains when Nishimura doesn’t. He’s watching them with a funny look on his face. “You -- jump at shadows. Or talk to people who aren’t there.”

Natsume’s face falls, and Nishimura shoots Kitamoto a dirty look. Kitamoto visibly backtracks.

“Not that we care, we’re still your friends! I just -- I never considered you were actually seeing ghosts.” He finally closes the last handful of steps between them and crouches. He cards Natsume’s hair back into place in as friendly a way as Nishimura tousled it, and smiles at whatever Natsume’s expression looks like. “It really _does_ explain a lot. We’ll have a _ton_ of questions for later, for older you, but for now -- it’s okay. We believe you.”

It’s never gone like this before. It’s never been this easy, it’s _never_ turned out right. Natsume looks at his hands and doesn’t know what to say.

“Thank goodness,” Taki breaths, hands folded over her heart. “You two are so sweet, I don’t know what I was worried about.”

Nishimura sputters. “ _Sweet_?”

“So tell us about this yokai, Natsume,” Tanuma says, sitting cross-legged beside him. “What happened to make it do this to you?”

Natsume opens his mouth to answer, but the memories are foggy and far-removed. Grabbing at them is like grabbing at mist, and as far back as he can remember clearly is the open hillside, sitting in these too-big clothes on a warm patch of sun-soaked grass, a fat little yokai ahead of him blustering and yelling without any true anger in its voice.

The same fat little yokai says, “This brat helped a Days Eater and it turned back his time in thanks. Since it was an act of gratitude, I’m sure I can convince it to undo the spell -- I just have to find it.”

“I’ll help you!” Taki and Tanuma say at the same time, and Natsume starts, wide-eyed.

“No, you shouldn’t,” he says, reaching out to them. “It’s not safe! Even the nice ones can be mean, they don’t really understand how people are. Nyanko-sensei -- “

“I’m not taking anyone who can’t even _see_ yokai with me to _look_ for one,” the cat grumbles irritably, swatting a soft paw at Natsume’s arm. “What sort of fool do you take me for? No, these brats will take you someplace safe and wait for me to return.”

“Let’s go to your house, Tanuma,” Kitamoto says, straightening. “Your father’s still away, isn’t he?”

“That’s right.” Tanuma just looks happy to be of any help at all. He adds, “We should probably call Touko-san and let her know Natsume’s spending the night at my place.”

“Touko-san?” Natsume asks. Nishimura blinks at him.

“Your foster mom! You can’t have forgotten _Touko-san_.”

Natsume watches Tanuma take out his cellphone and scroll for a second or two through preprogrammed numbers instead of typing a bunch in. Oddly, when he notices Natsume watching, he pulls the phone away from his ear and puts it on speaker instead.

A woman answers after a few rings. Natsume’s breath catches in his throat, and the arm Nishimura has draped around his shoulders pulls him a little closer.

“Hello, Touko-san. It’s -- “

_“Kaname-kun! How are you? Takashi-kun just went out to get some more sweets for you and Tooru-chan. That greedy Nyankichi ate them all up when we weren’t watching.”_

“Actually, Touko-san, I think we’re going to hang out at my house instead,” he says a little awkwardly, glancing sidelong at Taki. “Um, Taki and I ran into Natsume while we were out, and then bumped into Nishimura and Kitamoto, and one thing led to another -- “

 _“You kids can never sit still,”_ she says fondly, nowhere near annoyed. Nothing like any of Natsume’s other temporary families would have been, if he had changed plans like this so suddenly, if he had had a friend call last-minute to let them know. _“Well, that’s alright! Have a good time! And make sure Takashi eats a big dinner, and breakfast, too. That boy of ours needs looking after.”_

“We’ll look after him,” Tanuma says in a quiet voice. He’s watching Natsume as he says goodbye, and Natsume only remembers to take a breath when Nishimura nudges him.

His eyes are wide, and his heart is a lump in his throat. No one has ever talked about him so kindly before, never when they didn’t know he was listening, never. He blurts, “I want to go back. To how I was before. I want to go back so I can go home.”

“Don’t you worry,” Taki says firmly, reaching over to push some of the long fringe out of his eyes. Her fingers are gentle but nothing about the look in her eyes is soft. “We’ll take care of everything this time.”

Nyanko-sensei huffs, and bumps his head into Natsume’s arm, and says, “I’ll see you to the priest’s house and make sure you’re warded, otherwise you’ll just attract more trouble. Let’s get a move on, brats.”

Nishimura hops up, and reaches down for Natsume’s hands to pull him up to, then says, “Wait, wait, we can’t go anywhere like this.”

He points. Natsume follows the point down to his own bare feet. “My shoes and socks were too big, so I left them on the hill,” he says. “It’s okay, I’ve gone through woods without shoes before.”

“That’s good to know,” Nishimura says, deadpan.

“I’ve got it,” Kitamoto says simply, and the next thing Natsume knows he’s swinging through the air. He flails for a moment, stunned, and then finds himself looking down at the others from his new seat on Kitamoto’s shoulders.

“It’s been awhile since Mana’s been little enough for this,” Kitamoto adds cheerfully.

Natsume clutches at Kitamoto’s head, wide-eyed. His friends’ faces are shining as they grin up at him, and Natsume doesn’t -- no one’s ever --

“How come -- “ he stammers, and Nishimura scoffs at him.

“I told you we weren’t gonna let you walk without shoes! What if you stepped on something sharp? Didn’t Tanuma _just_ tell Touko-san we’d look after you?”

“And I thought _I_ was the mom friend,” Kitamoto says dryly. Nishimura scowls deeply and Tanuma muffles a laugh behind his hand. Taki trades a look with Natsume that feels familiar, in all its fond exasperation, and he can’t help smiling at her.

He doesn’t remember much, but he remembers the lotus field, and the path they follow into the forest. 

He remembers a hospital room and two kind people reaching out to him, touching his battered hands carefully and asking if they could take him home.

He remembers a visit from his friends -- the two of them standing in his yard and telling him _we can tell when you aren’t happy, we want you to have fun_ \-- and crying himself to sleep that night because he was so grateful he didn’t know what to _do_.

“How’s the view up there?” Kitamoto asks after they’re a little more than halfway to the temple where Tanuma lives. His hands are still folded loosely around Natsume’s ankles, making sure he won’t fall. 

“It’s good,” Natsume says brightly. And he remembers enough to know he’s never meant anything more when he adds, “Thank you!”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Bygone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13185186) by [GoLBPodfics (digiella)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/digiella/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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